


Freshwater Symphony

by murasaki_gyps_eng (murasaki_gyps)



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Established Relationship, High Fantasy, Multi, Pre-Poly, Pre-Relationship, Tales of Altea Fanzine
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-03
Updated: 2019-02-03
Packaged: 2019-10-21 14:32:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,005
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17644595
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/murasaki_gyps/pseuds/murasaki_gyps_eng
Summary: “No one comes to the clearing of Mizx by chance.”Takashi Shirogane, “Shiro” for his fellow soldiers, spoke those words aloud without knowing why. He was dying, his left hand pressed tightly against the wound that ripped up his liver, and the only things that came to his mind were the stories people told about the forest surrounding the town of Barino.The trees there talked – the town’s elders said, maybe to scare away the most enterprising children – and they could confuse you, until you got lost between branches and roots. Only the ones in need were led there, and he wished dearly for magical creatures to exist and come to his aid.





	Freshwater Symphony

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this piece for the [Tales of Altea Fanzine](https://twitter.com/talesofaltea). It was great to write something about my favourite OT3 in VLD and a pity I didn't have the time to expand this fantasy setting. I hope you enjoy the reading~!

“No one comes to the clearing of Mizx by chance.”

Takashi Shirogane, “Shiro” for his fellow soldiers, spoke those words aloud without knowing why. He was dying, his left hand pressed tightly against the wound that ripped up his liver, and the only things that came to his mind were the stories people told about the forest surrounding the town of Barino.

The trees there _talked_ – the town’s elders said, maybe to scare away the most enterprising children – and they could confuse you, until you got lost between branches and roots. Only the ones in need were led there, and he wished dearly for magical creatures to exist and come to his aid.

“I could really… really use someone to sew me up… but there wouldn’t happen to be any medically inclined/licensed fairies here, uh?” he whispered, holding a hiss of discomfort, and it seemed to him that the wind was mercifully caressing his face.

“That’s silly, as if fairies were real…”.

The blood loss made his mind confused and his reasoning inconsistent. Shiro didn’t want to fight back the heavy haze anymore and he closed his eyes, letting his conscience sink into a dark mud.

It was fine, even so. Dying in battle to protect Barino of a Thousand Walls was a honourable end. If it was true that the clearing of Mizx only welcomed the ones in need, he hoped that the inaudible voices of the oaks would guide someone to that place interwoven with peace, to find his corpse and bury it.

The cold arrived early, crawling up his limbs like a hungry snake. What he didn’t expect was the aggressive roaring of pounding water and then the intense scent of water lilies, that floated over the still surface of ponds.

Was the Other Side made of water? In the realm over the Nine Seas, where he came from, people said it was a dark, monotonous place, where souls wandered for a long time, searching for a second chance. The increasingly near whispers should’ve belonged to them but he couldn’t move. His body was heavy, like a marble block, and even breathing was a difficult task. Then a voice uttered, “Allura, did you see him?” somewhere in the darkness that surrounded him.

“Don’t go near him, Lance, he could be dangerous!”.

Shiro would’ve liked to reply that, no, he didn’t mean any harm to anyone. From his dry lips, though, not a whisper slipped out, not even when his head was suddenly freed from the hindrance of his iron helmet.

Fear finally came. He wanted to kick the air, stand up, defeat the hand that was clawing at his neck and dragging him down. The whispers became dissonant and his mind distant. Then he felt it, the water: it wrapped around him completely, it submerged and suffocated him, slithering into his nostrils and reaching his lungs. The last sensation he felt was that of a cold fluid, penetrating his bleeding wound like a blade. He would’ve screamed, if he could only catch his breath. Instead, he curled up on his own spinal cord, like a rag doll, and stopped thinking altogether.

Takashi Shirogane’s eyes were grey like the iron of his longsword but, when he opened them again, the light that was caressing his face made them almost blue. There was, indeed, a silver-and-blue-tinted darkness around him, and… a sound, the deafening sound of water, pouring down endlessly. Shiro squinted, trying to focus the world around him: a thin layer of water blurred his vision. Bas-reliefs adorned an immense, vaulted ceiling, that ended in a gigantic round opening. Moonbeams crossed it and, like silver fingers, lightly touched those drawings made out of black stone, illuminating them with rainbow-y hues. Shiro got lost, while trying to decipher them: they talked about beings coming out of the sea – nymphs, perhaps – and of wars with terrestrial monsters which resembled enemies he had already fought.

He was confused: was the Other Side a cave filled with water? It was a very strange place. “Strange…” he uttered, but only bubbles came out of his mouth, floating into the light blue liquid around him.

“I advise you not to stress yourself too much: that water bubble was made not to break until the end of the treatment cycle, Pretty Eyes!”.

A mischievous voice suddenly reached him from an unspecified place under his feet, a moment after he had raised his hand in front of him. Shiro turned his head, right and then left: he’d already heard that voice during his near-death experience between the leaves of the clearing of Mizx.

“Treatment cy… where am I… wasn’t I… dead?”.

Words left his mouth with difficulty, little bubbles that floated into the trap of thick water around him, before exploding into actual/full-fledged sounds into the atmosphere of the cave. He was surrounded by waterfalls, falling down in white and foamy waves, and he was only noticing then, no longer distracted by the colourful stories above his head.

“No, you’re not dead. We managed to save you in the nick of time, but we had to bring you to the Waterfalls of the Eternal Return. Don’t ask us ‘where’ they are, our laws forbid us from revealing it to strangers. We already made an exception by allowing you to enter here”.

That second voice, too, determined and regal, Shiro had already heard a while before – and he didn’t know whether that “while” had been a few minutes or many hours before. He lowered his gaze, but the only things he was able to recognise were even more water and dark, polished rocks.

He was floating in the air, several feet above a round platform, adorned with ample, polychrome spirals. Only by squinting could he focus on the two figures standing right in the center of the platform, against which water crashed with a myriad of white spurts.

Their big, light blue eyes looked as if they were made of water, too, like their dark, dripping bodies, that almost mixed themselves with the waves.

“You are… Altean Nymphs?” uttered an incredulous Shiro, observing their faces. As if those two creatures had been reading his mind, the curative bubble in which he was hovering started to float downwards.

“I’d tell you ‘Bow down, stranger!’ if you could, because you’re standing in front of none other than Allura of the Clear Springs, Queen of all our Altean Nymphs!” exclaimed the Altean with dark, short hair, posturing with a rather comical pomposity. Shiro barely held back a resigned smile: that magic creature – according to his memories, his name was _Lance_ – was putting on a snarky fact that seemed to brush against him with invisible fingers, even through the water bubble.

“And this is Lance, stranger. Head of the Altean Royal Guards and… I’m regretting choosing you as my fiancé”.

She, _Allura_ , had hair as white as clouds and an imperious attitude, but under it emerged all the ironic sweetness she was directing to her… Shiro frowned, processing the world “fiancé”. There was no need to smile so condescendingly: he couldn’t let himself be distracted by the two creatures’ looks and voices, it didn’t matter how attractive they were.

“Aww, Allura, you’re so cruel!” Lance replied as he crossed his arms, acting humiliated.

“You’re… you’re real!” the soldier muttered, noticing too late that his words might’ve sounded offensive to the pointy ears of the Altean Nymphs.

Lance and Allura simply glanced at him with amusement, and he rushed to reformulate his thoughts. That magic water maybe was healing his wounds but Shiro still felt really confused: “You’re… you’re not just stories in the voice of Barino’s elders…”.

“We’re real, indeed! You can even touch us to verify it, if you’re not convinced,” Lance whispered, while his thin, dark lips curved into a mischievous smile. For a moment, the way both the human and his Queen looked at him was equally embarrassed. Then she was the one who, “Lance!”shouted, pointing an accusatory finger at him.

Shiro felt relieved. Since he’d started protecting Barino, the only non human creatures he’d ever met were Galra, not exactly the most friendly species of planet Tamran. Yes, he knew the Olkari, but the magic the spirits of trees in his homeland practiced was something more familiar to him than healing water and rainbows bas-reliefs depicting bloody wars.

Then he noticed, with great bewilderment, that he was at the same eye level of the two Altean nymphs, but there was one detail about them that made him nervous.

“You’re also… very scarcely clothed…” he said it in a breath, trying to sound as emotionless as possible.

“Oh, right! You humans have modesty!” Lance giggled, confirming the soldier’s suspect that Altean nymphs didn’t bother with clothes, considering their habits of dwelling in the water. Shiro understood the convenience, but he wasn’t so sure that he could keep talking with those two gorgeous creatures without looking insistently at the ceiling.

By chance, he caught Allura’s focused eye and the small, sympathetic nod of her head, as if she’d understood his problem by simply looking at him.

“Lance, let’s show our foreign guest how beautiful Altean clothes are. And how quickly one can wear them!”.

The shared look between the Altean nymphs brought a smile on Shiro’s face: those two magical creatures arose a curiosity he never would’ve thought he could experience, in regards to magic. Until that moment, all of his concerns had stopped on the slopes of Barino’s white walls and on the enemies who besieged them. He’d never tried to wonder what could be beyond it/them, in those forests that seemed as wild as tediously populated by animals alone.

In front of his eyes, the white foam of restless waves flew in two spirals, coiling around the dark bodies of the Altean nymphs. In the blink of an eye Shiro almost didn’t see the transition from shapeless mass of water to clothes, shiny as silk but solid as the limbs they were covering.

“Well, now that we’re all dolled up… we still have introductions to complete… unless you’d rather be called ‘Pretty Eyes’,” Lance stepped in, wearing a white-and-golden short tunic, that left little to the imagination. Shiro stared at him with a shocked look, before realising he hadn’t said his name yet.

“Oh… oh, right! I… My name is Takashi Shirogane, but everyone in this kingdom calls me Shiro… I’m the General of the Second Army of Barino and… to assuage your doubts of… well, a lot of moments ago… I’m not going to harm anyone. I didn’t come to the clearing of Mizx because I was out for blood… I was only searching for a place to hide”.

“It’s a reasonable explanation, considering that otherwise trees wouldn’t have let you in,” Allura intervened with a solemn voice. Her dress – a long tunic with rainbow-y shades that left her muscled arms completely uncovered – was very similar to what would’ve been the appropriate clothes for a Queen. Shiro’s grey eyes focused on her austere face, while she kept talking: “But you’ll understand that we took your weapons away from you as a precautionary measure, although your reactions up until now have been… passable”.

The soldier touched his hips, noticing only then that the effect of the water bubble was not the only reason he felt lighter: he was only wearing trousers and the cotton shirt he often wore under the armour. Furthermore, he realised, that light blue water orb was creating a safe space between him and the Altean nymphs.

He didn’t blame them: in their place he would’ve been just as suspicious. However, he felt that he had to win over their trust – and it wasn’t a ploy. There was something, in Allura and Lance, that enthralled him terribly, and he somehow even felt disappointed by their diffidence.

“I…  of course. I realise now I… trespassed into your realm, and I didn’t mean to, but the enemy I was attacked by surprised me while I was away from my fellow soldiers and that wound… was deep enough to make me lose consciousness…”.

The two Altean nymphs observed him attentively, waiting for a misstep. Could Shiro dare to reveal the details of his mission to them?

The images that densely decorated the ceiling of the Waterfalls popped into his head with a polychrome flash, and Shiro caught his breath so quickly he felt dizzy. Maybe _talking a lot_ wouldn’t hurt for a change.

“Galra… a soldier from Sendak’s Sacred Horde wounded me. I was following one of their patrols to find out where they brought… some people…”.

Allura’s curse, muffled in a language he didn’t even know, was a hint Shiro had hit the mark. They had a common enemy. An enemy that made the Queen’s light blue eyes burn with rage, making her look fearsome and… beautiful.

“What people? I thought you humans preferred to fight amongst yourselves”.

Even Lance sounded angry while he asked him those questions, but his rage was somehow more _human_ , something Shiro felt he could manage. He was glad that nymph was sympathetic enough towards him to lower his guard and believe in his words.

The soldier looked at him, trying desperately not to maintain eye contact, his gaze as blue as it was curious, before Shiro pressed on: “Friends. Friends who came here with me from my kingdom… the Kingdom of Goddess Yumari. Friends the Galra kidnapped… to use them to build their weapons… or so we believe in Barino. There was a truce between all the human kingdoms, even the small ones, since Lord Zarkon…”.

Another curse.

“Sorry… I apologise… Shiro. As you can… sense, there’s been bad blood between Alteans and Galras, too, and I… I’d like to know more”.

Allura sighed. There was a crack in her determined voice, and Lance’s fingers were on her shoulder, caressing her slowly and reassuringly. The Queen indulged those caresses, showing the human more vulnerability than she would’ve wished. But his grey eyes possessed a reassuring look and, as much as Lance did, Allura wanted to surrender to that internal whisper that told her to _trust him_.

“There are… military secrets about Barino that… I should hide, but you… you saved me, and I owe you my life, and this is something I can’t ignore,” Shiro replied in a whisper, afraid of breaking the thin tension between them.

“We don’t care about Barino and its mountainous streets, Shiro. We only want to know what the Galras are doing outside the forest, since keeping an eye on them is becoming increasingly difficult. I know it looks like a great effort but we’re asking you to trust us”.

Lance was the one who talked, and any hint of slyness had vanished from his beautiful, thin face. In his posture, that was submissive and cautious at the same time, the solider recognised the experience of a creature less young than he looked and as used to managing military emergencies as Shiro.

“You… you trusted me, bringing me in this sacred place. I think the exchange is more than fair,” Shiro nodded. “Not fair enough,” Allura replied, frowning and raising a hand in front of his face in an imperious move.

Before Shiro could protest, the water bubble that enveloped him dissolved, and he was gently laid down on the shiny, damp surface of the platform.

The soldier caught his breath, and his lungs were no longer filled with magic water but with fresh air. His left hand automatically reached for his right side, just under his ribs: under his fingertips, he found healed muscles and skin, where a red gash had been pulsating painfully before.

“Bringing you here was a risk, it’s true. We trusted you… bot nothing happens by chance”.

Allura’s voice brought him back to reality and Shiro raised his gaze, facing the two Altean nymphs with no more screens diving them. They were truly gorgeous, even more than what his blurred vision had made him believe, and they had a strange and fresh scent, like the water that sprung out from the mountain springs.

“Because only the ones in need come to the clearing of Mizx?” Lance mocked her, quoting from memory those stories Shiro heard being repeated a million times and which, who knows, maybe the rivers themselves suggested to Barino’s elders.

Allura nodded, taking a casual glance at him, before focusing again on the imposing but still uncertain figure of that human the trees had delivered to them.

“The place we will guide you to now is even more secret than the Waterfalls. We will have to blind you temporarily and you won’t know where it is. Do you accept? Otherwise we’ll erase your memory, we’ll bring you back to the edge of the forest and everything you saw will be nothing but a dream to you”.

Shiro’s grey eyes looked at Allura and Lance’s faces: their determined expressions showed nevertheless the unspoken need for his help. In another time, Takashi Shirogane would have refused: he already had too many responsibilities and a vital mission to complete.

But those two creatures, as magic as they were enthralling, needed his help, and he nodded before he spoke again, without second thoughts. He felt gratitude and something strange, something that squirmed in the pit of his stomach and that he couldn’t define, not yet.

“I accept. I… hope you have plenty of time, because it’s a long story”.

“Oh, yes, we have all the time for you,” Lance mocked him, or maybe not, before acting all charming again. Allura, for once, didn’t huff, but nodded encouragingly toward Shiro, before a little orb of shining water appeared on the palm of her hand.

Shiro inhaled, preparing himself to everything that would come. No one came to the clearing of Mizx by chance. Only the ones who really needed it were led there by trees: and he needed companions for that adventure that promised to be even more intricate than he had ever imagined.


End file.
